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"No!" said Eric, with a heavy sigh, as the image of Vernon instantly passed through his mind; "no more cricket for me." "Nay, but you must play to-day. Come, you shan't say no. You won't say no to me, will you, dear old fellow?" And Wildney looked up to him with that pleasant smile, and the merry light in his dark eyes, which had always been so charming to Eric's fancy.
"Oh, we're not hissing you, sir," said Wildney excitedly; "we're all hissing at lying and cowardice." Mr. Rose thought the revulsion of feeling might do good, and he was striding out again, without a word, when "Three times three for Mr. Rose," sang out Wildney. Never did a more hearty or spontaneous cheer burst from the lips and lungs of fifty boys than that.
His apparent neglect made poor Wildney even more unhappy, for Wildney loved Eric as much as it was possible for his volatile mind to love any one; and it seemed hard to be deserted in the moment of disgrace and sorrow by so close a friend. At school the next morning the various masters read out to their forms a notice from Dr.
First two or three more offered, and then a whole lot, gaining courage by numbers. So the plot was regularly laid. Pietrie and Graham were to put out the lights at each end of one table immediately after tea, and Wildney and Brooking at the other, when the study fellows had gone out. There would then be only Mr.
"We havn't seen him for an age, and he's getting too lazy even for a bit of fun." "Good; and Graham," suggested Eric. He and Wildney regarded their possessions so much as common property, that he hadn't the least delicacy in mentioning the boys whom he wanted to invite. "Yes; Graham's a jolly bird; and Bull?" "I've no objection; and Pietrie?" "Well; and your brother Vernon?"
So that night Duncan, hearing of what was intended, sat in the next study, and Eric, with Bull, Wildney, Graham, and Pietrie, had the room to themselves. Several of them were lower boys still, but they came to the studies after bed-time, according to Wildney's almost nightly custom. A little pebble struck the study window. "Hurrah!" said Wildney, clapping his hands, "here's the grub."
He remembered how often he had got cheered there for his feats at cricket and football, and how often he and Upton in old days, and he and Wildney afterwards, had walked there on Sundays, arm in arm. Then the stroll to Port Island, and Barker's plot against him, and the evening at the Stack passed through his mind; and the dinner at the Jolly Herring, and, above all, Vernon's death.
"Upon my word, honors are being showered on you!" said Wildney. "First to get the score of the season at cricket, and bowl out about half the other side, and then go to tea with the head-master. Upon my word! Why any of us poor wretches would give our two ears for such distinctions. Talk of curse indeed! Fiddlestick end!"
Ah, how sad that such scenes should be so rare and so short-lived! "Hark tirra-la-lirra-lirra!" said Wildney; "there goes the postman's horn! Shall I run and get the letter-bag as he passes the gate?" "Yes, do," they all cried; and the boy bounded off full of fun, greeting the postman with such a burst of merry apostrophe, that the man shook with laughing at him.
Wildney and Montagu accepted the invitation; and they arrived together at Fairholm on one of the early autumn evenings. They both greeted Eric with the utmost affection; and he seemed never tired of pressing their hands, and looking at them again. Yet every now and then a memory of sadness would pass over his face, like a dark ripple on the clear surface of a lake.
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